The Baron of Arizona (1950)

This is no horror film, but Vincent Price is his usual creepy self as James Reavis, the real life con man back in the late 1800s who almost stole ownership of the Arizona Territory through a wildly detailed, decades-long scheme. Reavis thought big and so does writer/director Sam Fuller. This was Fuller’s second film and, as with his first, he makes something offbeat on a B-movie budget. Always fascinated with rogues, Fuller gives us no good guy here. The good people in this film are weak and the lawmen aren’t much more than warm bodies. Reavis isn’t even an anti-hero, despite a few unconvincing (and mercifully brief) attempts to sell him as such. Vincent Price is a charismatic actor, but he doesn’t have that kind of charisma. He’s always a bad egg, not to be trusted, a mad scientist even in the Old West. In other words, he’s perfect for the role of a villain who comes up with an outlandish plan and then takes it to the moon. Some pasted-on moments of sentimentality almost spoil the entertainingly mean spirit here, but they’re so clumsy that they’re forgettable and this film survives the years as a real sleeper curiosity for fans of Price and Fuller.